Yoichi Sai

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It's been 25 years since Japanese director Nagisa Oshima shocked international audiences with In the Realm of the Senses, his lurid look at a sadomasochistic couple that loses all abandon and commits a carnal act never before captured on the big screen: one lover cuts off the other's penis.

New Yorker Films is hyping the similarity between Senses and Oshima's latest work, Taboo, saying the new film, "like... Senses, deals with the anti-authoritarian sway of sexuality, a nearly taboo subject in Japan."

The recruiting of a skilled but effeminate young warrior creates a cancer of impulsive desires, rumors and jealousy that eats away at an esteemed 19th Century samurai militia in Nagisa Oshima's new psychosexual drama, "Taboo."

The men of this tight-knit unit all come to either admire the young enlistee for his talent with a sword or, unexpectedly, lust for his soft features and coy social demeanor -- or more frequently both. The eventual result is upheaval in the camp, as the boy (Ryuhei Matsuda) becomes the object of lust, scorn and gossip while taking various lovers, fending off others and at the same time trying to adhere to his duty as a samurai.

The film's characters are largely fascinating and enigmatic, especially the boy -- who absentmindedly toys with the affections and fury of his admirers -- and a lieutenant who seems to be the only person in the camp keeping his perspective. (The lieutenant is played by "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, the actor-writer-director whose poetically violent gangster films have made him a Japanese cinema icon.)